The Shape of What You Lived

And you wait. You wait for the one thing that will change your life, make it more than it is— something wonderful, exceptional, stones awakening, depths opening to you.

In the dusky bookstalls old books glimmer gold and brown. You think of lands you journeyed through, of paintings and a dress once worn by a woman you never found again.

And suddenly you know: that was enough. You rise and there appears before you in all its longings and hesitations the shape of what you lived.

Book of Images

Rainer Maria Rilke

I do believe that I spent a lot of my life wishing for something more.  Expecting every year to deliver more “success”–like an upward trajectory towards some undefined pinnacle.  There may have been an appreciation for how unbelievably fortunate I really was–but that nagging expectation for more was always present and quite overshadowed the moments of my life.  Rilke and life experiences over the past few years have sparked a shift in how I view the life I’ve lived and am living.  The old adage that everything happens for a reason becomes ever more clear the more open minded and reflective you are when looking back at the journey of your life.  That choices–concrete as they seem at the time of making them–are really quite fluid.  The world really does conspire to take you along the path you were meant to be on if you let it. 

The Shape of What you Lived series is my tribute to recognizing and embracing these moments of my life that are here right now–and how they are enough and plentiful and wonderful in how right they are for me right now.  The paintings are inspired by my morning moments, the mistiness of the mornings which symbolizes to me how we know not what our day holds for us, but if we pay attention there may be an inkling of suggestion about what it means as we move through it.  The paintings are a way for me to contemplate these beautiful words by Rilke, words that continue to affect my responses to my life.

Sharon Kingston, 36 x 48 in, oil on canvas

Sharon Kingston, 20 x 24 in, oil on canvas

Sharon Kingston, 24 x 24 in, oil on canvas

Sharon Kingston, 24 x 36 in, oil on board

#paintingsandpoetry #rilke